Hello all. Just learning Blender at the moment after taking an interest in it for the past few months, and thought I would enter this competition to try and improve my modelling and learn all the modelling tools. Gonna try and model Hugh Laurie.
A big problem I’m having at the moment is that I have found a few video tutorials on head modelling; but I can’t really call them tutorials. They aren’t timelapse and they have audio and everything, but they are mostly ‘look what I can do’ videos. The person making them just zooms around using all kinds of shortcut commands that I do not know. Is there a video or even a written tutorial that covers some of the more advanced modelling commands, like creating a polygon from between 3 edges and the like? I have been reading the Blender wiki, and it’s sorta helpful.
Here’s my start anyway. Couldn’t get rid of the grid, sorry; don’t know how yet.
Hey lowpolyBlender Welcome to Blender and it’s really cool that you are having a go at this contest
Please tell me which video tutorials you looked at so far. Let’s see if we can find you some good ones.
As a side note, I personally believe Mr. Bomb’s (Jonathan Williamson) Head Tutorial dvd to be the best I’ve seen for Blender, not because he is my fellow partner and sponsor in this contest but because that’s what I used myself to get started. He deals with the whole modeling process, taking a person step-by-step.
Let me know anyways what you’ve seen, so we can see what we can find for ya.
Hi. To create a poly from 3 edges you can select the 3 edges and hit the F key to make a face. I believe if you just select 2 edges it will work as well. To switch what your selecting from faces/verts/ or edges you can hold Ctrl + tab and a menu will come up. To get rid of the grid you can hit F12 to render it out. Press F3 after that to save it to your computer. As far as tutorials go I’d recommend the Essential Blender book. If your tight on money it is online as well. It is written so you can skip around and do chapters you are interested in by themselves. Of course posting here with problems you have can also be useful. Good luck.
Thanks Linux, good one about Essential Blender, do you have the link for it by any chance? (online version) I’ll see if I can find it, sure I had it somewhere hmmmmm lemme see.
I am trying to think of other tutorials that helped me out. Usually the case is you get stuck doing something and then go search out for a tutorial.
What helps me is designing a simple project with an element I want to focus on like say modeling, lighting, or what have you where the other elements are simple. For example I have an idea to do a skate park scene. Skate obstacles are basic primitive shapes so the modeling won’t take long, which will give me more time to unwrap them and practice texturing them. So if you have time you may try to do some projects aside from the contest to help bring you up to speed. I don’t know about you but for me lately free time has been expensive. Is there any one function you are looking to learn? If it is simple enough I may be able to do a quick video for you. Or someone else if they get the chance.
Hi lowpolyBlender point your browser to www.free3dtutorials.com you will find some great tutorials, some are software specific but if you carefully observe whats been done you can convert it over to Blender. The vast majority of tutorials I learn from are written for other software packages plus you will find mr bombs videos there and some others the are also a couple of useful texturing tutorials there.
Thank Linux, I found that one also, but it seem seriously disjointed if I’m correct. Text and pics archived separately. Just one big mess. I thought someone was working on doing a proper wiki-type layout. Maybe I was wrong, I’ve got the book so I didn’t really pay much attention to the progress of it.
Can’t remember where I got the tuts, but the links so far are great. I actually have essential blender downloaded already, never thought to check that. Will do know. Thanks Linux for the ‘F’ tip I got some really great refs of BenDaise so expect a real update in a few days
Thanks Tyrant for that brilliant link! My new favourite site
When I found that link I saw mentions in the search results of a pdf version. I also have the book as well so haven’t used the online version at all. There is a link to a wiki version on that page but I noticed some of the images are just the Blender logo.
Yar it’s all good. Getting used to modelling in Blender is a bit of a nightmare though So many shortkeys to remember! Spent all evening modelling an ear that would have taken me an hour in Max (just because I’m used to Max). I’m also having trouble with getting references to line up, that could be an issue…we’ll see.
Welcome to Blender and it’s really cool that you are having a go at this contest 
